Joe Biden working with European governments to avert global crisis and help lower food prices
Temporary silos will be built along the Ukraine border, including in Poland, in an attempt to help export more grain from the country and avert a global food crisis, Joe Biden has announced.
The US president told a Philadelphia union convention on Tuesday that he was working with European governments on the plan “to help bring down food prices”.
Continue reading...Survey across 10 European countries and UK shows respondents favouring an end to the conflict rather than holding Russia accountable
Europe’s unity over the war in Ukraine is at risk as public attention increasingly shifts from the battlefield to cost of living concerns, polling across 10 European countries suggests, with the divide deepening between voters who want a swift end to the conflict and those who want Russia punished.
The survey in nine EU member states – Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden – plus the UK found support for Ukraine remained high, but that preoccupations have shifted to the conflict’s wider impacts.
Continue reading...Military figures and MPs on list along with staff from most major British newspapers and broadcasters
Russia has banned 29 members of the British media, including five Guardian journalists, from entering the country, its foreign ministry has said.
Moscow said the sweeping action was a response to western sanctions and the “spreading of false information about Russia”, as well as “anti-Russian actions of the British government”.
Continue reading...President reveals fighting in Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk was particularly intense and said there was ‘no justification’ for countries to delay sending aid
The UK’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has refused to be drawn on whether she would negotiate directly with the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic over the situation of Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner. The two British men have been sentenced to death in eastern Ukraine by what Truss called a “sham trial”. She told listeners of the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme:
The two people were fighting for the Ukrainian army. They were permanently located in Ukraine and they are prisoners of war. And the case is being taken up by the Ukrainians, by the Ukrainian foreign minister.
I am doing everything I can, in the best way I can, in the way that I judge is most effective, to deliver these people’s release.
These people are prisoners of war, fighting for the Ukrainian army. And it’s important to maintain that principle. And the Russian proxies are violating the Geneva Convention. And we need to be very, very clear about that.
That’s why the best route is through the Ukrainians, and I can’t go into the details of my discussions with the Ukrainians, but I can assure you, and I can assure the families, that we’re working flat out on this.
Crews of ground attack aviation launched rocket air strikes on military facilities and equipment of units of the armed forces of Ukraine. Missile launches were carried out in pairs from low altitudes. As a result of the combat use of aviation weapons, camouflaged fortified field positions and armoured vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here
An industrial zone where about 500 civilians are sheltering is under heavy artillery fire from Russian forces, Reuters reported the regional governor saying.
Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine that includes Sievierodonetsk, said on Facebook that Russian forces controlled about 70% of the city and fighting there was fierce.
Continue reading...Zelenskiy adviser says far more hardware is needed to reach ‘heavy weapons parity’ with Russia and drive out its forces
Ukraine has called on the west to supply 300 rocket launchers, 500 tanks and 1,000 howitzers before a key meeting on Wednesday amid concern in some quarters it is pushing its demands for Nato-standard weapons to the limit.
The maximalist request was made publicly by Mykhailo Podolyak, a key presidential adviser, on Twitter on Monday where he argued that Ukraine needed “heavy weapons parity” to defeat Russia and end the war.
Continue reading...Analysis: Ruling bucks trend for wealthy individuals to suppress public interest reporting via courts
The decision by a high court judge to dismiss a libel claim brought against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr by the multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks is a timely shot in the arm for public interest journalism.
Concerns have long been mounting that the legal landscape in England and Wales places excessive restrictions on reporting, with London – where the high court is situated – often described as the libel capital of the world.
Continue reading...Britain’s goods exports to EU a record £16.4bn in April despite impact of Brexit
The UK has drastically increased the volume of natural gas being pumped to the EU amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, powering a record monthly rise in goods exports to the continent despite Brexit.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show EU goods exports rose for the third consecutive month to £16.4bn in April, the highest monthly level in current prices since comparable records began in 1997.
Continue reading...Russian artillery bombarding industrial area of Sievierodonetsk; Finnish president says Russia using ‘weapons of mass destruction’
Continue reading...Thinktank also says nuclear powers must take immediate action to prevent rise amid heightened risk of weapons’ use
The global nuclear arsenal is expected to grow in the coming years for the first time since the cold war, and the risk of such weapons being used is the greatest in decades, a leading conflict and armaments thinktank says.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and western support for Kyiv has heightened tensions among the world’s nine nuclear-armed states, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) thinktank said on Monday in a new set of research.
Continue reading...Jordan Gatley’s family say he died in the battle for the strategic eastern city of Sievierodonetsk
A former British soldier has died fighting Russian forces in the Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, his family have said.
Jordan Gatley left the British army in March “to continue his career as a soldier in other areas” and had been helping Ukrainian troops defend their country against Russia, his father Dean wrote in a statement posted on Facebook on Saturday.
Continue reading...Regional governor says Azot plant, where hundreds of civilians are taking shelter, remains under Ukrainian control
Fierce fighting has continued in the strategic city of Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, where Russian shelling caused a fire at a chemical plant in which hundreds of civilians are believed to have taken shelter during some of the most intense bombardment of the war.
The governor of Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, said in an interview with local television that the Azot chemical plant remained under Ukrainian control, adding that fighting was under way on Sunday on the “outskirts of the city, in the streets directly near the plant”.
Continue reading...Brahim Saadoun is a much-loved marine on active duty, they insist, and not a mercenary, as court in Donetsk claims
While Russia claims that Brahim Saadoun was a foreign fighter in Ukraine, the 21-year-old Moroccan sentenced to death alongside two Britons last week had spent years making the country his home.
Friends and family of Saadoun have called for his freedom, telling the Guardian he was an active-duty marine and not a mercenary as claimed by Russian media and pro-Russia officials in eastern Ukraine who announced the sentence.
Continue reading...Analysis: the assault in Ukraine continues, but it seems clear that real damage is being done to Putin’s economy
• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
Sanctions have affected many aspects of life in Russia, but one particular shortage has sent the wealthy elite into a spin: beauty clinics are running out of Botox.
The business daily newspaper Kommersant reported this month that Botox imports saw a threefold drop to 74,500 units in the period between January and March compared with the same time last year, after one western manufacturer stopped exporting to Russia.
Continue reading...Shaun Pinner’s loved ones ‘devastated’ after he received verdict alongside Aiden Aslin in what UK calls a ‘sham’ sentence
The family of a British man sentenced to death for fighting Russian forces have said they are “devastated” and called for “urgent cooperation” to secure his release.
Shaun Pinner, 48, received the death penalty, along with fellow Briton Aiden Aslin, this week in what the UK government has branded a “sham” sentencing.
Continue reading...UAE has become haven for superyachts, private jets and ‘dirty money’ since invasion of Ukraine, but has taken no action
Campaigners and politicians are calling for the United Arab Emirates to be blacklisted over its failures to combat the flow of “dirty money” and to enforce sanctions imposed on Russian oligarchs.
The Gulf state has emerged as a key refuge for the Russian super-rich fleeing the impact of global sanctions, with private jets and superyachts linked to oligarchs heading to the UAE after the invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading...German, French and Italian leaders to meet with Zelenskiy ahead of G7 summit in June; Ursula von der Leyen says EU decision to come within days
Returning to Kyiv on Saturday for a meeting with Ukrainian president Zelenskiy, she said they will discuss Ukraine’s reconstruction and progress towards European Union membership.
Russian air defence forces have shot down three Ukrainian war planes, according to the country’s defence ministry.
Continue reading...Prices have spiralled out control since invasion of Ukraine as market struggles to adapt
Eldar Gadzhiev’s heart sank when he heard the sputtering from the engine of his Skoda one day in April. Gadzhiev, who owns a fleet of four cars that he leases as taxicabs in Moscow, knew it was a terrible and expensive time for a breakdown.
Prices for spare parts, if you even could find them, had spiralled out of control since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine two months earlier. “I understood that I was in a bad situation,” he said. “I thought: the repairs are going to cost as much as the car.”
Continue reading...Cholera warning as Russia accused of razing high-rises in Mariupol without removing bodies; Serbia rejects call to impose Russia sanctions; fighting rages in Sievierodonetsk
Continue reading...This blog is closed. You can catch up on the week in Ukraine here. Live coverage will resume later.
The UK’s foreign secretary Liz Truss will raise the case of Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, the two British men sentenced to death by a pro-Russian court in occupied Ukraine, when she speaks to Ukraine’s foreign secretary Dmytro Kuleba later today, PA Media reports.
Truss has already called it a “sham judgement” and insisted it has “absolutely no legitimacy”.
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